You get what you settle for

as part of my translation from myspace:   I was venting about behaviour.

To quote from Thelma and Louise "You get what you settle for"

Or to put it another way, borrowing from NLP every behavior has a benefit for a person.

Now normally I had come across this in terms of encouraging good behaviour. But in this case I was venting about what, in my view, was sub-optimal behaviour.

I had a bit of a vent about what I thought was going on. When I had been talking about my own stress levels I had commented a number of times that it wasn't about work load, it was about behaviour. But when you start to think about why the behaviour is persisting, despite there being a definite will to "do the right thing", you end up coming full circle to workload (the number of things we were doing).

And this is compounded by working inefficiently. To quote Einstein

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." 

If we grasped the nettle and said "no" to a few things, we could turn some work around, clear the decks and be ready for the next thing on the list. Shorter, sharper, more focused.

As long we are doing the same things, the same way, no one person can make up the difference. Trying is simply a road to bad physical and mental health. The only sensible and logical thing is to stop trying.

The only real question is why it took me so long for me to come to this conclusion.

"It's not what happens to you that matters, but how you take it."

OK so I finally clocked that myspace had reinvented itself and stopped hosting blogs. Shows how often I used it. While there is probably a lot of content that can just shuffle quietly off the internet coil.... there are a few posts that I shall "reuse and recycle" - so there may be a few posts while I translate the content.

This time last year I was reading a book called "Control Stress" by Paul McKenna. He quotes Dr Hans Selye as saying

"It is not the event, but rather our interpretation of it that causes our emotional reaction."

I figured I would double check that quote, and the closest I could find was the one I have used as the post title.

"It's not what happens to you that matters, but how you take it."

Hmmmm. Now this was at a time when I have been signalling pretty strongly that things are not good at work - to both my line manager and HR. And spent time looking at stress triggers and so on and so forth. Not much happened as a result. From where I stood it felt that it wasn't a question of sheer workload, it was much more about behaviour. 

 (I did a mind map where the centre said "everything is grim" - I found it the other day.... not much has changed :( )

Then a colleague went off with stress, and another left for a new job. So then we had all the previous complexity and chaos, but exacerbated by 40% less resource in the management team.

So there I was.... stressed. According to Dr Selye I should have been able reframe that... reinterpret it... so that my emotional reaction is different.

What happened next ? Well they appointed a new director, who restructured us and then left. Joy. My job disappeared and my team were split up. Three guesses how I felt.

There still seemed to be a prevalent view that any negative view of what had happened was purely about "point of view". As I said to one of my HR colleagues: if something is a muck heap, I can look at it from any side, from any point of view, it is still a muck heap.

Goal setting

A few weeks back I was at interview. I can say that now as it's no secret any more. There was one question that completely stumped me .... and got me thinking, on all sorts of levels. The question was

Tell us about a personal goal that you have failed to achieve and how you dealt with that

Hmmmmm. Now I've been on the other side of the table doing competency based interviewing so I have an idea what they are looking for. They are not trying to get me to confess to something "bad".... they are trying to find out more about how I deal with things going wrong.

My brain starts mentally thumbing through the past to try and come up with an example that fit the question. And I'm struggling.... the examples that I can think of have really related to things outside of my control. Like my horse having arthritis.

Whoa....

Do I only remember success and I have blanked out all the bad stuff ? Is this selective memory ?

Or....

Does this mean that I don't set myself goals that I can't achieve ? I know I have a "talent" for pacing myself - I know my own limits and I work within and up to them. But have I got too good at that and don't actually challenge myself ?

Oooo.....

Does that mean I don't actually set myself goals at all ?? If they are always within my limits, always "do"able, are they really goals ?

Needless to say I only went through parts of this at the time, and some of it later when I was pondering my reaction. Though I suspect I did briefly have that "deer in the headlights" look as I tried to work out something....anything.... to say. Inventing things in an interview is never a good idea and not an option. But I was coming up empty. I explained the only example I could come up with (wanting to do things with my horse but being limited by her physical issues) but that I wasn't sure that was the kind of thing they were after. We moved on.  I got the job so it can't have been too much of a disaster.

Don't get me wrong, it is not that I have never experienced failure. I have. We all do. And I have learnt from it. In fact if they had asked me to talk about what I had learnt from failure, that would have been easier to answer. For example, my degree result was pretty useless. But I was lucky in that my future employer wasn't bothered about that and so the related "goal" still went ahead. I didn't fail to achieve the goal, but I did learn from the experience.

Do I remember the good stuff more than the bad ? I'm not sure (is that because I'm blanking out the bad stuff ? I could paint myself into a corner with this one !). But that isn't the question they asked. Would I have had equal difficulty answering a "tell us about a goal you succeeded at and how" ? I suspect so. I think I tend to assume failures are *mine* whereas successes are about the whole team.

They did ask me what I would see as my greatest achievement.... and the next question was whether my boss would agree with my answer. There is a saying that

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime

My answer was that my achievement was building the team,. as it wasn't just about the projects *I* had delivered, but about the ongoing value the whole team were adding. And no, I didn't think my boss would have the same  answer (after all, they had just restructured my team out of existence !).

Do I set myself goals ? Yes, though not all the time. I don't think we tend to think of everything in our life in terms of goals and objectives. Sometimes we are just doing stuff ;) And when I deliberately set myself a goal, yes it probably is carefully thought through, planned, considered in a way that makes it a stretch but achievable.

If  reality intervenes, then I have options - in the way we do with managing risk. Say something changes to make the goal unrealistic. When my horse was simply lame, I managed that lameness but I confess I had not really given up on ever riding her again. Maybe this was just denial. (as part of the change/transformation cycle) But it did mean I had to consider a longer timescale for what I had hoped to do.

And then last year she lost the sight in one eye. And that meant having to accept that I really wasn't going to achieve certain goals with her. It didn't necessarily mean I was never going to achieve those goals - but certainly not in the near future and with my current horse.

So what I did was redirect. In this case I was lucky that my mother has a little pony, not suitable for my original goals but in need of a jockey to "do fun stuff" with. In an ideal world would I be riding a small native pony ? No. But can we have fun together - yes. (And am I learning from it..... absolutely !)

I don't think I would have considered my original goal as being "have fun". It was more about the what and how I wanted to have fun. But when the chips are down, you often have the chance to realise what is at the core of your aims. Maybe it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In this case the original goal (with my horse) was further up the needs pyramid. But with her issues, I wasn't then fulfilling needs at a lower level. She simply needs to be a horse - and by effectively retiring her, I can let her get on with doing that. And in the meantime, there is a win-win by working with another pony.

And maybe one day I will get back to those unmet equestrian goals ;)

Are there other areas of my life in which I am not setting goals (and should be) ? Well there are certainly areas where the report card might read "could do better". I guess I need to think some more about whether that is something within my circle of control (something I have the power to control myself)... and if so maybe set some appropriate goals and actions.

I've been reading a book called "Grow Your Own Carrots". It has a structure for goal setting. What I like about it is that rather than setting the big, long term goals, they encourage you to set shorter term goals that you can achieve in, say, 8 weeks. I need to finish it soon as it belongs to my current employer - so that gives me a nice short term goal... to finish the book this week ;)

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

Waste. In a previous incarnation, the company I worked for saw (and measured) inefficiency as "waste" and aimed to reduce it. Instead of just measuring pages of paper printed, or miles travelled, they looked at things like the time lost in meeting through them starting or running late.

I guess that was the start of my "recycling" habit. Only it isn't just about recycling.....

Reduction

is about making sure you don't acquire or create things you don't need in the first place.  And that when you do need something, what sort of packaging does it come with ? What sort of waste does it create ? (My coffee machine uses discs that can be recycled - but there aren't any recycling points near me and you need to store a massive volume to justify getting them picked up).

From a work point of view the "thing" might not be tangible. It might be about not having meetings without a purpose and agenda, not starting projects that don't have a clear strategic alignment and owner.

Or it might be more obvious and be about printing less, writing efficient code, not getting the latest gadget because it is a status symbol or is the latest craze.

I remember any number of people saying "storage costs nothing". Yet every server we add to the estate takes time to maintain, update, manage, keep secure. Every server requires power and, at some point, become obsolete and needs replacing. Is that really "free" ?

Reuse

Many things can be "repurposed". Clothes can be reused either by someone else, or as part of the textiles that are used in the paper trade. Plastic bottles can be used to water gardens, or make windmills to scare birds away. The only limit is our imagination !

Recycle

If you can't do either of above, then clean up after yourself responsibly.

Cardboard, many plastics, tetrapacks, glass - they can all be recycled. It really becomes more a question of whether there is enough of something to make it worth collecting up and selling to someone to use as an ingredient for something new.

Check whether systems and applications are being used - and get rid of the ones that are no longer needed.
Retire old kit when it gets to its end of life

And you know I think there may be an extra category in terms of workplace waste - and it relates to the "inefficiency" comment that I started with.

If you go to a meeting unprepared, if you don't follow the purpose, agenda and so on of the meeting, then that is wasting all the attendees' time. Even more so if the meeting runs over or runs out of time to complete all the necessary items. So many times I hear people saying "we have too many meetings" - but those very same people are the ones who turn up unprepared and sidetrack the meeting.

My message to them would be "clean up your act !". If they don't want long meetings that over run, then do the prep, stick to the agenda, get in and get out. (Of course it's not easy to say that to your boss, or your boss's boss :( )

The Planning Fallacy

Blame the Book Club at work - one of the books we were to read was "Thinking Fast and Slow". It's hard going and I am still ploughing through it !

Then someone posted, somewhere, a link to an article about Hofstdter's Law

"any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected - even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account. "

and just after that, I got to the section of the book that covers the planning fallacy. The author tells a tale of a group of people (including him) who were working on developing a new course. After a period of work during which they had defined what they wanted to do and completed two chapters of the associated supporting text, they had a conversation about how long they thought it would take them to complete the work. There was a range of answers, from 18 months to 2.5 years.

Among the group was someone who regularly did this sort of work and - after having given his estimate (which also fell within the range of answers), he got asked "how long do other people take to do this kind of work ?" and "as a group how do we compare to the average ?"

It turns out that a signficant number of groups NEVER complete the work, but for those who do - it takes around 8 years on average.

And the group doing this particular piece of work were all fairly new to it, so were probably below average.

Hmmmm.... so their own estimate not only assumes they will finish, when there is a fairly high likelihood they won't, but it also assumes they will work three times faster than the norm when they are an inexperienced group !

In the end they did complete, and in around 7 years.

I carried on reading the book, and came across another concept that struck me as potentially useful. The premortem basically uses "prospective hindsight" to look at what might make the project/activity fail, and then look for solutions. That may sound familiar as it is the same kind of thing that we are trying to do when we run Risk Workshops. What I thought might help us is the way of framing the work i.e. to brief people to "imagine one year in the future, we implemented the plan and it was a disaster" and then work through every reason why it did fail.

While this may seem like a negative mindset, it is purely an exercise and intended to prevent that disaster from happening.

And while I'm on the subject (well sort of), here is a link someone shared on cognitive bias and this one too - The Flaw of Expected Values

Doom Loop: restructure blues

or alternatively "I'm a human, get me out of here !"

I was at a conference recently and they showed a video of a previous conference speaker - that speaker made reference to a book "Good to Great" which I gather talks about Kimberley Clark. I got home and decided to check the reference out as it sounded interesting (<cough> geek <cough>)

And it led me to a book by Jim Collins, and the following article about that book ( Good to Great ) where he talks about the "Flywheel Effect"

"Now picture a huge, heavy flywheel. It’s a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle. It's about 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and it weighs about 25 tons. That flywheel is your company. Your job is to get that flywheel to move as fast as possible, because momentum—mass times velocity—is what will generate superior economic results over time.

Right now, the flywheel is at a standstill. To get it moving, you make a tremendous effort. You push with all your might, and finally you get the flywheel to inch forward. After two or three days of sustained effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. It takes a lot of work, but at last the flywheel makes a second rotation. You keep pushing steadily. It makes three turns, four turns, five, six. With each turn, it moves faster, and then—at some point, you can’'t say exactly when—you break through. The momentum of the heavy wheel kicks in your favor. It spins faster and faster, with its own weight propelling it. You aren't pushing any harder, but the flywheel is accelerating, its momentum building, its speed increasing.

This is the Flywheel Effect. It's what it feels like when you’re inside a company that makes the transition from good to great."

and it's opposite - the "Doom Loop"

"Companies that fall into the Doom Loop genuinely want to effect change—but they lack the quiet discipline that produces the Flywheel Effect. Instead, they launch change programs with huge fanfare, hoping to “enlist the troops.” They start down one path, only to change direction. After years of lurching back and forth, these companies discover that they’ve failed to build any sustained momentum. Instead of turning the flywheel, they've fallen into a Doom Loop: Disappointing results lead to reaction without understanding, which leads to a new direction—a new leader, a new program—which leads to no momentum, which leads to disappointing results. It’s a steady, downward spiral. Those who have experienced a Doom Loop know how it drains the spirit right out of a company."

Hmmm. If you are in the middle of that change, how do you know if you are part of the "Flywheel Effect" (virtuous circle) or the "Doom Loop" (vicious circle) ?

No one is going to propose a change intending it to be part of a Doom Loop are they ? And probably within change you will get people who see it both ways.

Is this like the Emperor's New Clothes ? Are there always going to be some people within any change who see it as a Flywheel, and some who see it as a Doom Loop... and only time will tell ?

Or are the telltale signs that you are in one or the other ? Are there differences between the two. Isn't that why we have lessons learnt exercises, best practice for change management and so on ? You know, the process that starts with "share the vision"...

Can a good process produce a bad outcome and vice versa ? Is that gut feel and instinct that all is (or is not) well enough or do you need cold hard facts in the bright light of day ?

MOSCOW - are we there yet ?

A work-related post:

Moscow - but as prioritisation rather than destination. As time is a constraint, and we all know there is always more work we could do, somehow we need to prioritise what we are doing....

Must Should Could Won't (now)

How we prioritise things consists of two elements - how important something is, and how urgent it is - MoSCoW gives us the "how important" part of this. It doesn't mean that only the "Musts" get done. But there are only a certain number of "Musts" that can be done at any time, and not everything can be a Must.

So the other part of the equation is how urgent an item is - urgency alone is not a reason to do something (see the urgent/important matrix for more on this). But if we only ever have time to do the urgent things, over time everything becomes urgent.

In reality we end up with a mix of things, like the story about how you fill a jar. You can see the "stones" as being the larger things you need to do, or as the "Must" items that go in first. And then you fill in with the pebbles, sand, water in turn.

It is often difficult to get a clear decision on what is a Must. For things like help desk calls we can define a set of criteria - for example that a "priority 1" is when a complete service is unavailable. This doesn't necessarily mean it is a "big" thing - in a previous job we had a printer down. It was initially treated as a low priority as hey, its just a single printer. But it quickly emerged that the failed printer was located in the factory and was used for printing the despatch notes as things went out of the factory. No despatch notes meant nothing leaving the factory !! That's a priority one. Having a set of clear criteria in terms of the impact something has allows the priority decision to be consistent rather than "who yells loudest". After all, as the saying goes

"A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"

(I can't find a reference for that quote as it is so often repeated)

When we do hit a crisis the focus is always on resolving that crisis first, and sometimes the step of working out why the crisis came about never gets done. Without that root cause analysis, how do we prevent the crisis happening again ? Another quote, which may be from Pat Parelli but he does have a habit of quoting other people

"what happened before what happened happened ?"

In my day to day work there are often deadlines that we are working to - dates for submission of papers, dates when a project task needs to be done. As that date approaches, there is a need to know "are we there yet ?". Fairly often it is only as we reach the wire that the message comes across "no, net yet". But like any journey, if we know the route and the expected timings along that route, often we have an idea we are at risk of not being there on time well before hand.

A few times recently I've had reason to say "in reality didn't you know this situation 3 weeks ago ?" because there was something due to happen at that point that didn't. And the subsequent leadtimes and steps after that mean that if things were late 3 weeks ago, it was extremely unlikely that the end point could be achieved on time. If they hadn't caught up two weeks ago, then you start to be asking for heroics. And if they hadn't caught up by a week ago, we're talking miracles.

What stops people saying "I'm not sure we're going to make it ?" Is it a triumph of hope over experience ? Is it that we really don't like to admit we can't do something ? Is our work culture unsupportive of saying "it's not going to happen" ?

Hw do we fix that so that if we have something that is urgent and important, the right questions are asked to get it back on track ? And if it is not so urgent, so an open and honest conversation can happen to work out and agree a new and realistic plan